News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

anescient

Re:Goodbye real-time era, hello ‘event-driven’ era on Tuesday May 06, 2008 @06:39PM (#182928)
Am I missing something, because this doesn't seem to say much about architecture. It just seems like some guy got his marketeer on, and is using strange words to say, "You aren't storing enough data".
Re:Orders of Magnitude on Tuesday April 08, 2008 @12:49PM (#158014)
A few interesting entries:

Angular velocity:

10,348 RPM - 52x CD-ROM

42,980 RPM - fastest known pulsar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_J1748-2446ad

Power:

3 MW - diesel locomotive

2.5 MW - blue whale

Or set your HDD as the only boot device and set a BIOS password.
Re:NASA demos new model moon buggy on Friday March 28, 2008 @08:04PM (#148992)
> ... its top speed is a pokey 15 miles an hour.

Hey now. That's not the hot rod the original was, but that's way faster than I thought this thing went.

Set the global/outtermost background color. I've got F6F6EF only in the innermost content area; it's all framed by my default bg color.
I agree strongly with your "augment" point, and I'd just like to point out that online communications mediums provide opportunities for expression not possible in other contexts.

For one thing, text chat is a very different art from speaking. Any kind of timing or nonverbal sound has to be expressed somehow in ASCII. Most emoticons are thin symbolic standins for actual face-eye contact, but some emoticons and larger images posted on forums and the like express things you couldn't possibly express verbally.

Now, you may say, hey great, so the next great leap in human relationships is fucking LOLcats. Well, people walk around saying Git 'R Dun to each other in the flesh. In my opinion LOLcats is at least a step up from that. Besides, that's just retarded superpopular images.

Putting aside the base communication, what about file transfers? If I'm chatting with someone, it's trivial to hand over, in a sense, some image or mp3 or document or whatever. And we're both in a position to handle those files: play or edit them or whatever.

So.

Yea.

Communication on the net is far more than just speech without inflection.

Re:A keyboard without keys - Dasher on Monday March 10, 2008 @02:01PM (#133288)
I was shocked when I tried this how easy it is to pick up. I got fast enough to IM comfortably after two or three sentences. I may break this out now and again when I'm too tired or messed up to type properly.

Apparantly you can train it on sample text, which I haven't yet tried. I wonder if this can work well for code.

I have a few friends who've done time here: http://www.imagination-engines.com/

From what I understand, though, that's an almost totally crackpot operation.

Re:Game Graphics During the 8-bit Computer Era on Thursday February 28, 2008 @02:26PM (#125626)
> I would now consider Quake II to be the best of the current crop.

God, doesn't anybody have taste? Not that I'm not guilty of popping wood at the arrival of OpenGL in PC gaming, but come on people. Quake II's actual content is uninspired at best.

Re:Game Graphics During the 8-bit Computer Era on Thursday February 28, 2008 @02:22PM (#125621)
I learned to program in BASIC on a Tandy 1000SX and an m100. That thing was great for long trips to grandma's.

I still remember my very first attempt. I tried typing lines from a BASIC book into a DOS prompt, which obviously frustrated my tiny being to no end. My dad showed me how to start gwbasic, and I've been on this ride ever since.

Re:How a beautiful software system becomes Frankenstein on Wednesday February 27, 2008 @07:35PM (#125111)
I think it could happen either way, but it's certainly best for the team to structure itself to the project.
Re:Digital downloads will be Blu-ray's downfall on Sunday February 24, 2008 @09:59PM (#122865)
Even discounting the 'net, what about encrypted broadcasts a la DirectTV? That might be a better way to do HD content delivery in the near future anyway.

I don't think media like this is going to last more than one more generation. If that.